After a six-year partnership, NSPRA has acquired school communications survey company SCoPE, LLC, as of Nov. 15, 2022. The purchase will allow NSPRA to continue to offer SCoPE surveys through its communication audit and communication review services following the retirement of SCoPE founder Sandy Cokeley, APR. NSPRA also now owns the nationally benchmarked SCoPE data, which will be used in the future to inform association members’ communication efforts.  

“We’re excited about the opportunities this purchase opens up,” said NSPRA Associate Director Mellissa Braham, APR, who heads up the association’s audit service. “Bringing SCoPE in house will benefit our audit clients with new enhancements to our data collection, integration and reporting processes. We’re also exploring ways to gather and share SCoPE’s national data in a way that will benefit our members." 

SCoPE, or School Communication Performance Evaluation, provides standardized surveys for internal and external stakeholders on a variety of school communication topics, with results shared in the context of national benchmarks. With each survey, a school district’s local stakeholders—including staff, parents, community members, and more recently, students—are surveyed about their communication preferences, perceptions and ideas. Then key data points in the local results are compared to other districts nationwide to help put them in context.  

The SCoPE Survey concept was an outgrowth of an NSPRA project team’s work in 2012 to develop national benchmarks for best practices in school communications, as captured in the publication Rubrics of Practice and Suggested Measures. Since SCoPE, LLC, launched its survey tool in 2016, more than 75 school systems nationwide have completed a SCoPE Survey, many as part of a comprehensive communication audit. 

To prepare for the purchase of SCoPE, NSPRA welcomed a new communication audit surveys manager, Naomi Hunter, APR, last month. Hunter has more than 30 years of experience in strategic communications, including previous work with NSPRA as a consultant auditor. She is now an integral part of the association’s internal team of staff supporting audit projects, which also includes Braham and Communication Audit Coordinator Susan Downing, APR. 

NSPRA has offered communication audit services to K-12 school systems, school boards associations and education service agencies seeking to strengthen their stakeholder relationships for more than 35 years. The association has completed more than 200 audits across the United States and in Canada for school systems from 800 students to 190,000 students. To learn more about NSPRA’s audit services and SCoPE Surveys, visit www.nspra.org/PR-Resources/Request-a-Communication-Audit.